by Evie Wyld
We sit on the sofa and drink through the rest of the bottle. When my socked feet end up in his lap he puts an arm over them without pausing. We don’t move from the sofa until the sun starts to show through the blinds of the kitchen window. There is a strange feeling of coming to. I have to get back to Scotland today. The drive will be deathly.
‘I don’t know what we talked about all night.’
‘Me neither,’ he says, and in a rare moment of seriousness, ‘but I really needed that. Thank you.’
He stands and stretches, and I stand too.
‘I should go.’ He looks at his phone. ‘I have work in three hours.’
‘Yeah.’ I smile, and at the door he kisses me. It is mousy warm. There is the thrill of being a person that another person would like to kiss. It erases the clumsy feeling of the first time – this is a different kind of drunk.
I take the bin out and watch him walk down the road. I stand for a long time, because he must have told me – it’s the first thing you ask, the first thing you find out about a person. But I can’t remember where he works or what he does.
II
Peter telephoned in the morning.
‘Darling?’ he said when she picked up.
‘Oh, yes. Hello.’ Ruth had not slept well. She’d felt nauseous and worried, and had stayed too long in the bath, to try to calm the itch on her legs, the tickling bites of sandflies. From her bathroom she could hear Betty shouting at Bernadette, because of course Bernadette had not had permission to go to the picnic. And now Ruth had a cold, and on top of it, Betty was cooking bacon and the smell of it rested in Ruth’s throat in a very unpleasant way.
‘How was the picnic?’
She wanted to be able to say that it was a complete disaster because he had not shown up and it had been very embarrassing for her. The truth was not far off, but none of it was because of Peter’s absence. She wouldn’t let him know about the boat trip.
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘strange, but fine.’ She wouldn’t tell him that when the boat arrived back the children were wet and frozen and quiet. Sea spray! Reverend Jon Brown had said. It was choppy, but we had fun, didn’t we, boys? He took no account of the three girls. The children had walked mutely back to the house with her, responding to her animated questions – Did you see a seal? – with shakes of their heads. She felt desperate to know they were unharmed and to show that she was, too. They were so cold, Peter would have been horrified. As they neared the house, Betty, scarf off, black hair standing straight up, came running down the path towards them, her face white, and Ruth thought for a moment she might strike Bernadette, but instead she pulled her away and up the path at a trot without saying a word. Michael took hold of Ruth’s hand. The one moment of the day that she tucked into her heart. She had stood outside their bedroom at points throughout the night, listening for evidence that she had killed them – a rattle in a breath. But other than the occasional sleeping murmur there was nothing but the husky warmth of children sleeping.
‘Look,’ said Peter. ‘I’m awfully sorry I said those things to you. I think you’re doing a sterling job with the boys. I was just taken aback rather by that mad vicar dragging them out of their beds in the middle of the night.’
‘That’s all right, darling, I understand. When will you be home?’
Peter took a great inhalation of breath as though the very act of thinking about it exhausted him. ‘I’m looking at my diary now, and there’s a Christmas lunch with one of the clients that I’ll need to attend on the fourteenth, so it really makes no sense to come back until Wednesday. Will you cope without me?’ She could hear a smile in his voice, and for that moment it felt so good to hear it, she resolved to respond to it. The winter picnic was over, and next year she would not attend or permit their beach to be used.
‘Of course. We’ll be just fine.’
‘And how is the girl settling in?’
‘Well, Betty is keeping her busy.’ Ruth watched herself in the mirror as she spoke. Today it seemed a face not quite her own looked back.
‘Good, good.’ He was distracted, probably reading a report while on the phone to her. She had seen him do this when Elspeth’s mother called.
‘Well, I’ll let you go. Do drop in on Alice if you get lonely.’ The London office was in Holland Park and Alice was only at Kensington. For a moment she thought of the Christmas lights.
‘Good idea – I’ll see how she’s fixed.’ He wouldn’t, of course. They didn’t understand each other in the slightest, and as for Mark, Peter thought him some sort of pervert because of his sculpture collection.
‘Goodbye then, darling,’ she said.
‘Sleep well,’ he said, despite it being just past nine thirty in the morning. He hung up. His attention was on something else. It would be terrific to have something to be engrossed in. As she hung up the receiver, there came the pound of footsteps on the stairs and down came the boys.
‘Morning!’ said Michael, just shy of a shout.
‘Was that Dad on the telephone?’ asked Christopher, more composed.
‘It was, he’ll be back on Wednesday. And then, hopefully he will stay put until after Christmas.’
Betty had laid the table with her usual vigour. There was a loaf of bread, warm to the touch, and on the boys’ plates two little bread ducks with currants for eyes. When she came in with tea, she seemed embarrassed.
‘Have you been up all night baking, Betty?’ It was supposed to be a joke but as she said it Ruth realised there was more than likely some truth to it.
‘Just an early riser today,’ she said, and was gone again. While the boys ate breakfast, Ruth went to the kitchen, where she found Bernadette at the table with porridge and a comic in front of her, and Betty standing behind her, stroking the girl’s hair. Bernadette appeared to be enduring rather than enjoying the attention. When Betty saw Ruth in the doorway, she walked down the steps and into the pantry. Ruth followed her.
‘Everything all right, Betty?’
‘Oh yes. I’m sorry about yesterday.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I thought she had your blessing.’
‘It was an overreaction on my part.’
‘No, if I’d known he was going to whip them all out into the sea for hours, I wouldn’t have let her go. I wouldn’t have let Christopher and Michael go, either. Reverend Jon Brown just sort of . . . took over.’
‘Aye. He’ll do that,’ she said.
‘And that game. To be honest the whole thing was a nightmare.’
‘Yes. I’ve always been grateful that my only part in the whole thing is to provide the pies. The reverend loves an event, and he’s very good at getting people with too much time on their hands and too much money in their pockets to join in with him.’ Betty straightened herself and swept her hair back off her forehead. ‘When will I expect Mr Hamilton back?’
‘Not till Wednesday.’
‘He works hard, that man.’ There was something not altogether complimentary about how she said it.
‘He does.’
‘And the boys are all right, are they?’ said Betty, energetically wiping down a shelf. ‘After their boat trip?’
‘They seem fine. They were very cold, which isn’t ideal. Their mother had weak lungs.’
Betty nodded. ‘Aye. The man likes the cold, that’s true.’
The weather was bad and the boys were content to stay indoors. She found them in the ballroom, Michael crouching on the floor drawing aeroplane after aeroplane and spreading the pictures out on the floor until he had a whole squadron, and Christopher propped up under the piano, with a cushion at his back so that he faced the French windows, holding a thick pile of comic books on his lap.
‘Are you boys warm enough?’ she asked, and they looked up at her, pale faces and dark eyes. They nodded.
‘What are you drawing, Michael?’
‘A squad.’
‘A squad?’
‘He’s drawing aeroplanes,’ explained Christopher, who was perhaps annoyed
at being disturbed.
‘Well, I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Betty’ll put lunch out at twelve, make sure you’re clean and ready for it then.’
She pulled the door shut, and listened outside for a few moments, but she heard nothing other than the scraping of Michael’s pencil on the paper. Perhaps she had blown the whole thing out of proportion. She’d had at least five glasses of champagne, and had drunk them rather quickly. A childish game, ending in being tickled. The children simply went on an adventure in a boat and returned cold. And now there was Christmas to think about, nothing more, nothing more.
In her study, she settled into her chair. Christmas took planning. Especially since the children’s grandparents were coming. Two lists, one of things that might be nice, including new outfits for the boys, getting the piano tuned and encouraging Peter to play carols. And a list of essentials: a goose, plum pudding, Peter’s Christmas present (perhaps a new tweed), presents for the boys (who knew), a bonus for Betty, a book for Bernadette.
She sat back and looked out the window. The Bass Rock was completely obscured by mist, and large raindrops clung to the window. She ought to be happy. She ought to be. She thought of Alice in London. How she would, if she fancied some air, walk down Kensington Church Street and along to the park and sit by the pond or in the cafe, or visit the V&A, or meet a friend and just go and walk by the river. Going for air in North Berwick just at that moment meant having wind punched down your throat and rain slapped into your face. Ruth had the Pavilion, but she had no anonymity. Reverend Jon Brown, or Janet, or anyone at all might inform her that she had been spotted drinking a cup of tea, as though this was information to be wielded over her. How had she managed to get to her age and be somehow all alone? Her friends had dropped off after Antony died. It wasn’t that no one had experienced the awkwardness of another’s grief before – everyone knew of a lost boy in the war. It was the way that Ruth had responded to it that had made people stop calling round for her. Those days when she felt him so strongly in the air around her, in the birds especially, sometimes it was even like he had jumped into the dog. Wind thumped against the window, and a sharp draught made it through the glass.
Stupid. It was only tickling. It was childish, that was all. When she turned round the wardrobe door was open, and she hadn’t recalled it being so before. She stood up and closed it, and as soon as it was shut three fast knocks came from the other side. She opened it again, thinking there must have been something hanging on the inside of the door, but there was nothing there, just the old wooden stool that had been there when they moved in.
She didn’t join the boys for lunch, but checked on them and saw that they’d taken sandwiches into the ballroom in napkins and resumed their positions. The number of aeroplanes Michael had drawn had tripled and Bernadette was now in there helping him, by drawing, very carefully and rather well, some tanks. The two of them were talking quietly about their undertakings and Christopher was still sheltering under the piano.
‘I thought we might get that seen to before Christmas,’ she said to him, ‘so that your father can bore us to death with some carols.’
Christopher looked up at her and seemed to accept her joke. He smiled. ‘That would be fun.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘It’s the Eagle,’ he said. It was the same one he’d been looking at after breakfast, and she noted it was on the same page too – a fishy-looking monster with webbed fingers and the name ‘Doomlord’ underneath him. Perhaps he had read it more than once through.
‘Is it good?’
‘I like it.’
It wouldn’t have been the right time to ask him if he was all right. He was all right. Children don’t bury things like adults do, you always know what a child is thinking, was her mother’s assessment of childhood. She hoped that it was true. It hadn’t entirely been the case with her, but perhaps boys were more resilient.
She found Betty again in the kitchen, and set about making a cup of tea.
‘Betty, this is awfully nosy of me.’
Betty put down the knife with which she was cutting carrots. She took a seat at the table, appearing to know what Ruth was going to ask.
‘Someone at the picnic said Bernadette is the spit of her father. And then there was a bit of drama. One of the women—’
‘Mrs Beech.’
‘Yes.’
Betty dragged one leg up and rested the ankle on her knee like a fisherman. There was silence and Ruth sat down too. Betty let out a long breath.
‘Mr Beech interfered with Mary. From a young age. Our mother knew it, but rathered he interfered with Mary than me, because she saw Mary as already damaged, because of her fits.’ Betty picked up the paring knife she had been using and turned it in her hand.
‘Oh good God. I’m sorry. That’s terrible.’ These things happened in every girl’s life at some point, of course – with Ruth it had been the curate, and he had only wrestled a fondle and a wet mouth out of her. But the hope was always that one’s parents were oblivious and remained that way. What a dreadful thing for one sister to know about the other. And for the mother to let it continue. It was enough, certainly, to separate a family.
‘And then Mrs Beech walked in on them, and that was when Mary had to leave.’ The scene it must have caused. Briefly Ruth wondered how she would react on finding Peter on top of another woman.
‘Reverend Jon Brown organised the spot for her at Landbrooke and Mr Beech paid for it. We kept the pregnancy a secret, Mother being Catholic, because Mr Beech would have forced her to get rid of it. When the Beeches found out, it was too late for them to get rid of Bernadette. Our mother retained her job on the condition Mary and Bernadette stayed away, and when Mr Beech died Mrs Beech sold up. That’s the full scandal of the whole episode.’
‘Does she know? Bernadette?’
‘No. She knows her mother lives in that place, and that’s enough for any child to bear. We told her her father was a soldier and died in the war.’
‘I’m so sorry. Those stupid women at the picnic.’
‘They’re not to blame. They’re going by what they believe to be true. It’s that Mr Beech, and there’s no one can reach him now. Men do these things and then they tick on with their lives as though it’s all part and parcel.’ She placed the knife back on the table, laced her small fingers together and caged them over her knee.
‘So now he’s gone – who pays for Mary in the institution?’
‘Since she became an adult, Reverend Jon Brown does. I chip in too, where I can, but the reverend has the ear of the board of governors and they give a reduced price. My hope is we’ll get her out of there soon enough. We’ve been talking, the reverend and I, about putting a little away for a flat for Mary and Bernadette and me. I’d still work here, of course, if you’d have me – just wouldn’t stay over.’
Ruth put down her cup of tea. ‘Since she became an adult?’
‘She was thirteen when all this happened. About Bernadette’s age when he started on her. I used to hide her away at the top of the house when I could. There was a cupboard she’d fit in – in your study. During the day, when Mrs Beech was out, I’d put her in there, but with her fits it became more and more a problem. It’s a big enough house that a little girl can hide herself well, but the problem is so can a quiet man of bad intention. She had an episode in the wardrobe and when I pulled her out she was half dead and not the same again after that. They do all sorts of treatments at the hospital with the cold baths and that. None of it helps, but when she’s left alone for long enough she’ll come out of herself. I’ve seen it with Bernadette. Like our Mary’s in there, hiding, and she only comes out when she knows she can trust a person.’
Betty wiped a sleeve over her eyes, even though they were dry.
‘Anyway. We’ve all got our things, haven’t we? And there’s a whole other life for her and that girl, we just need her to pass a few tests and she’ll be let out.’
‘What kind of tests?’
‘Well. There are people on the board who have to be convinced of certain things.’
‘Is she not free to go?’
‘Not at the moment. There have been several incidents while she’s been there.’ The woman’s voice faltered a little.
‘Betty.’
Betty held her eyes very wide open and inhaled deeply and stood, to return to her carrots.
‘As I say, everyone has their thing. But I am so grateful to you and Mr Hamilton about Bernadette. I really am – it’s half the battle won.’
‘If I can help?’
Betty nodded and smiled. It was there, just for a second, Betty’s true age. Younger than Alice. Perhaps the same age as Ruth herself.
On the way back upstairs, carrying her cup of tea, she passed the door to Peter’s study on the first floor, and then turned back and stood in front of it. She held her saucer in one hand and lifted the teacup to her lips while she looked at the closed door. She drank her tea like that, until it was gone, and then she opened the door. The room smelled of him – cloves and something antiseptic like peppermint. She placed her cup and saucer carefully on a coaster on the sideboard. On the desk a pile of ledgers, a pile of papers and a magnifying glass. She switched on the desk lamp and sat down in Peter’s chair. Out of his window a view of Craigleith. The sun shone brightly on it for a moment, illuminating the grass, and then a cloud passed over and the rain continued. Such wild weather. The rowing boat that Reverend Jon Brown had yet to return to the harbour after the picnic collected rainwater out of reach of the sea.
The first drawer held a disorder of items – pen nibs, bent paper clips, used typewriter ribbon, a compass with a cork on its point. It made her think of Michael’s drawer of treasures and lost things. She felt a strange affection for Peter, like he was just another child, hurt by things that should not happen in childhood. It smelled strongly of tobacco. In the second drawer, a starting pistol, half a dozen shoehorns from various hotels, the letters sent by the boys from school, and several black-edged letters of condolence dated in the weeks after Elspeth’s death. She didn’t read them, it was too much like looking into the working strings and muscles of a living heart. Just holding the letters made her dislike herself very much. It seemed at moments illogical that she hadn’t known the woman. This person so much a part of Peter and the boys’ lives, whose death was the most significant moment any of them were likely to experience. And then along she had trotted, fresh from Kensington, and inserted herself into their lives. The moment that they had met at the interval at a showing of All’s Well That Ends Well, which she hadn’t been enjoying at all, and he’d bought her a gin and tonic. And from there had followed a series of motions, all with a feeling of being preordained, like it had already happened and all they had to do was follow their old footsteps. The visible relief on her mother’s face that she would be married after all, and not remain some scarecrow spinster all her life. And these footsteps led her to this moment, alone in a vast house, distrusting her husband, and wishing for a link with his dead wife. Was this how it had been for Elspeth? How could it have been? She was too much alive for these things to happen to her. She surely didn’t ever stand alone in a room and ask herself how she came to be there, or stare at her unknowable face in the mirror and wonder who she had come to be.